Analysis of time duration of civil disputes in Italy: a case study with microdata from Sicilian courts

The excessive duration of legal disputes has been identified by scholars as a key factor contributing to judicial inefficiency and, as a result, limiting a country’s economic growth. This paper aims to analyze factors that influence the duration of such disputes. To achieve this goal, we use a cross sectional dataset of 16,789 first instance civil sentences issued in 2022 by ten Civil Courts in Sicily (Italy). We discovered that the duration of disputes is significantly influenced by twelve different topics of civil litigation codes: personality rights, family rights, property rights and inheritance law, contracts and obligations, tort liability, legal entities, company law, lease and commodatum, bankruptcy, administrative law, banking law, and other institutions. Notably, cases concerning personality rights exhibit the most protracted average duration; whereas, those concerning family rights display the shortest. In addition, using a set of quantitative indicators of regulatory complexity at the topic level, we show that complexity matters in determining the duration of disputes. Organizational features at the court level are also investigated, with small courts proving efficient. From a policy perspective, these findings carry noteworthy implications regarding resource allocation across sectors of judicial administration and foster legislative and regulatory simplification.